This book slipped in. Sometimes that happens. I don't necessarily have to be in a bookstore where I fight the urge to actually buy a book. This time I made a quick stop at the free library at the clubhouse. It works on the take a book, leave a book premise. I found Short Girls in the drop off bin.
I've had the pleasure of traveling to Vietnam and I have some very good Vietnamese friends. I love their food, their culture, their stories. This book sounded interesting. I'm also bogged down in an epic novel of a Jewish family in Poland just prior to World War II so I figured Short Girls would give me some relief from that.
Van and Linny are sisters, children of Vietnam refugees. They were born in America, and only know of growing up as Americans in Michigan. The sisters are not close and brush it off as being very different from each other when in fact they are alike, making the same mistakes in life. They both fall for the same insensitive, arrogant kind of guy with predictable results.
The characters of Van and Linny are flat to say the least. Since the title is Short Girls, I thought that being short would be an integral part of their makeup. It wasn't. Not to say that the author didn't make references to it, it's just that I never really pictured either of them as painfully short. Not tall, just of ordinary height. There wasn't anything else about them that endeared me to them.
Excuse the pun but Short Girls came up short. I rate it a 2 and I'm taking it back to the clubhouse. I'll dig back into the other novel and resist the urge to pick up another free book while I'm there.
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